Time Machine and The Invisible Man (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

“Why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?” (page 6)

 

There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone—vanished! (page 9)

 

“As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing.”

(page 17)

 

“I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist.” (page 18)

 

“Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed!” (page 52)

 

“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.” (page 70)

 

“Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.” (page 71)

 

The future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. (page 81—82)

The stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger.

(page 101)

 

His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness.

(page 107)

 

“I am just an ordinary man—a man you have known—made invisible.”

(page 161)

 

It was strange to see him smoking; his mouth, and throat, pharynx and nares, became visible as a sort of whirling smoke cast. (page 163)

 

“Just think of all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so.”

(page 172)

 

“So little suffices to make us visible one to the other.” (page 172)

 

“I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man,—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none.” (page 173)

 

“Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.” (page 202)

 

Published by Barnes & Noble Books
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The Time Machine
was first published in 1895.
The Invisible Man
was first published in 1897.

 

Originally published in mass market format in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics
with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
This trade paperback edition published in 2008.

 

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright © 2003 by Alfred Mac Adam.

 

Note on H. G. Wells; The World of H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, and
The Invisible Man;
Inspired by
The Time Machine
and
The Invisible Man;
and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

 

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ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-388-5 ISBN-10: 1-59308-388-2

eISBN : 978-1-411-43332-8

LC Control Number 2007941535

 

Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

 

Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

QM

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Social philosopher, utopian, novelist, and “father” of science fiction and science fantasy, Herbert George Wells was born on September 21,1866, in Bromley, Kent. His father was a poor businessman, and young Bertie’s mother had to work as a lady’s maid. Living “below stairs” with his mother at an estate called Uppark, Bertie would sneak into the grand library to read Plato, Swift, and Voltaire, authors who deeply influenced his later works. He showed literary and artistic talent in his early stories and paintings, but the family had limited means, and when he was fourteen years old, Bertie was sent as an apprentice to a dealer in cloth and dry goods, work he disliked.

He held jobs in other trades before winning a scholarship to study biology at the Normal School of Science in London. The eminent biologist T. H. Huxley, a friend and proponent of Darwin, was his teacher; about him Wells later said, “I believed then he was the greatest man I was ever likely to meet.” Under Huxley’s influence, Wells learned the science that would inspire many of his creative works and cultivated the skepticism about the likelihood of human progress that would infuse his writing.

Teaching, textbook writing, and journalism occupied Wells until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-legendary novel
The Time Machine,
which was followed before the end of the century by
The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man,
and
The War of the Worlds,
books that established him as a major writer. Fiercely critical of Victorian mores, he published voluminously, in fiction and nonfiction, on the subjects of politics and social philosophy. Biological evolution does not ensure moral progress, as Wells would repeat throughout his life, during which he witnessed two world wars and the debasement of science for military and political ends.

In addition to social commentary presented in the guise of science fiction, Wells authored comic novels like
Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps,
and
The History of Mister Polly
that are Dickensian in their scope and feeling, and a feminist novel,
Ann Veronica.
He wrote specific social commentary in
The New Machiavelli,
an attack on the socialist Fabian Society, which he had joined and then rejected, and literary parody (of Henry James) in
Boon.
He wrote textbooks of biology, and his massive
The Outline of History
was a major international best-seller.

By the time Wells reached middle age, he was admired around the world, and he used his fame to promote his utopian vision, warning that the future promised “Knowledge or extinction.” He met with such preeminent political figures as Lenin, Roosevelt, and Stalin, and continued to publish, travel, and educate during his final years. Herbert George Wells died in London on August 13, 1946.